I’ve done a few posts now where I’ve mentioned my student learning goal and professional practice goals for the Educator Evaluation that many districts have adopted. A decent number of people have asked me to share some information regarding my SLG and PPG. Last year was the first year my district used this evaluation method. In effort to stagger plans, some of us were to develop 1-year plans and others developed 2-year plans. I was on the one-year plan. This is good for you because I’ve now had to write TWO plans!

If you’re new to my page, I just want you to be aware that the majority of my caseload consists of preschool students. Because of that, you might not choose to work on the same goals, but they should give you an idea for your own goals!

For the 2012-2013 school year, I had a number of preschool students who had significantly reduced Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). I decided to select a cohort of students who had an MLU of less than or equal to 2.0 for my SLG. I'm not sure if other districts have the same type of plan, but we are required to submit our SLG and PLG for approval, then create a plan that includes action steps. This is a basic outline of that plan. The "due dates" of the steps are included in parenthesis.

Student Learning Goal:

By June 2013, 80% of an identified cohort of students with a BOY Mean Length of Utterance in Morphemes (MLU-M) of less than or equal to 2.0 will increase their MLU-M to 3.5 or greater as measured by language sampling.

Action Steps:

1. Obtain language samples and calculate BOY MLU (By 9/30/12).

*BOY = Beginning Of Year

2. Identify cohort of students with MLU of less than or equal to 2.0 (By 10/30/12)

3. Implement activities to target the following morphological structures/sentence types:

4. To demonstrate effectiveness, by Progress Reporting Period 2 (March 2013), 80% of students in the cohort should see an increase in MLU to 2.75 or greater.

5. For each student in the established cohort, I will provide home activities for parents to complete to facilitate carry-over of skills at least 4x/student during the 2012-2013 school year.

*2 activities sent by 2/28/13
*1 activity sent by 4/30/13
*1 activity sent by 6/20/13

Professional Practice Goal:

I will increase my content knowledge of Evidence Based Practice in the area of increasing MLU in preschool students by researching methods and establishing 4 different activities based on those methods by June 2013.

Action Steps:

1. Research evidence-based instructional strategies that target increasing MLU in preschool-aged students. Identify a minimum of two instructional strategies for use in therapy.

Also, you can find information on the FIVES criteria on Speech Techie's site.

I'm on a 2-year plan now, so my timelines will look a little bit different. However, my caseload does change every year, so I wanted to reflect that! For this go-around, I chose a cohort of students on an IEP for language delays/disorders (e.g., NOT articulation). I also selected students in the 4-year old program that will be going to kindergarten in the next school year.

Student Learning Goal:

By the end of each academic year, 75% of students in an identified cohort (language delayed/disordered students in the 4-year old preschool program) will demonstrate an increase in vocabulary and describing skills (using the Expanding Expression Tool) to be able to state 5 or more attributes/features of 6 pictured objects.

5. To demonstrate effectiveness, by Progress Reporting Period 3 (June 2014), 75% of students in the cohort should be able to state 3 or more attributes/features of 6 pictured objects.
*Obtain informal assessments 4x/year (BOY, Progress Report 1, Progress Report 2, EOY).

Professional Practice Goal:

I will increase my content knowledge of Evidence Based Practice in the area of vocabulary skills in preschool students by researching developmental norms and the Expanding Expression Tool (EET), as well as creating/finding and implementing 6 different activities related to the beads on the EET strand by June 2015.

Action Steps:

1. Research evidence-based instructional strategies that target vocabulary development in preschool-aged students, including the Expanding Expression Tool.

Freebie Alert:
The informal assessment sheets I am using to track student performance can be downloaded as a freebie HERE. My plan is to have students describe 6 different objects 4x in the year...Beginning of the Year (BOY), Progress Report 1 (PR1), Progress Report 2 (PR2), and End of the Year (EOY). My plan is to repeat the first 6 words at the end of the year to get a good estimate of progress. My prompt is "Tell me everything you know about a ___" and I give the student the EET strand. The sheets look like this:

For those of you who are new to the evaluation system, I hope this information is helpful! I think once you have one evaluation cycle "under your belt," it will be easier to write and implement new plans!

I'm curious...Is your district following this evaluation system or are you doing something different? If you are doing a similar evaluation system, what are your SLGs and PPGs?

Monday, February 3, 2014

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com for your convenience.
It feels like FOREVER since I've actually had the chance to sit down and share with you what I've been doing in my speech room! Before Christmas, my son came home telling me about a book that his preschool teacher read to him. It sounded fun! The next week, a co-worker had it out in her pile of snow themed books and I had to check it out. Sneezy the Snowman is now one of my all-time favorite snowman books!

I encourage you to head over to Amazon and use the "look inside" feature. You won't be disappointed! In the story, Sneezy keeps looking for things to make him less cold. The first thing he does is drink hot cocoa. Many of my students can relate this...it is a fairly common activity post-snow play! If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that we used Hot Cocoa Speech (a very fun freebie) by Lauren over at Busy Bee Speech:

I used cotton balls because we're not supposed to give food to students...well, technically there is a loophole. A permission slip must be signed by the parent of EVERY student in the group. It just so happens that one of the teachers with whom I work had already sent home a permission slip for marshmallows! So, after reading the story to that class, we discussed ways to warm up and what we like to eat with our hot cocoa. The kids made this craft (the pattern is from Mailbox Magazine) to bring home:

Every January, I target /s/ blends with my articulation students. Why January? Well, it's the perfect opportunity to target the sound in a naturalistic way! There are just about 100 ready-to-go target words! Here are just a few: snow, snowman, snowball, skate, scarf, sled, slide, slip, slippery, skid...You get the idea! So, with my articulation groups, we made this snowman craftivity:

For the snowman, I used a printable page from Tales of a First Grade Teacher. I got the photos from Phonology Roundup by Super Duper (I got the book that comes with a CD ROM). I printed 2 pages per sheet of paper so the pictures would be smaller. We glued the target words on and, in some cases, added some bonus words (sticks, snowflakes, scarf)!

And that pretty much sums up my week last week! I'd love to hear from you. Have you read "Sneezy the Snowman"? If so, what do you think of it?

I work as a school based speech-language pathologist in New Bedford, MA. I work primarily with students in preschool and kindergarten. I'm also the mom of a very sweet little boy who takes up much of my free time.